Being a Kiwi, I am, by birthright and moral obligation, a rugby fan. Rugby has always been a part of my life; as a child, I spent countless weekends on the muddy sidelines watching my brothers play, and oftentimes I’d join in on their training sessions. On match days, Dad would wake us in the wee hours of the morning and bundle us into the van, driving us to a parishioner’s house to watch the All Blacks pummel their overseas opponents. (We did not own a television, so our rugby education depended entirely on the generosity of our church community.) And so it is rather delightful to live on the other side of the world and wake early in order to catch an All Blacks game like I did in my youth. Some traditions survive both adulthood and international relocation. The Nations Championship is on at the moment, and it’s been thrilling watching the All Blacks beat France, Italy and Ireland. But I’ve also been cheering on the Scottish rugby team, who have been putting up a valiant effort against Argentina (winning), South Africa (losing) and Fiji (winning). As with New Zealand, rugby is a source of national pride in Scotland. As one of rugby’s oldest nations and a founding member of the Home Nations Championship (now the Six Nations), Scotland boasts a rich rugby heritage, even as it has, in recent decades, struggled to achieve the sustained success enjoyed by perennial powerhouses such as South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland and France. Rugby union in Scotland in its modern form has existed since the mid 19th century. Indeed, the first official international rugby match was actually played in Edinburgh in 1871, when Scotland defeated England at Raeburn Place in front of 4000 people. The Scottish Football Union (SFU), later renamed SRU, was founded in 1873, and Scotland joined the International Rugby Football Board (now World Rugby) in 1886 with Ireland and Wales. Since then, Scotland has enjoyed considerable success, winning the historic Calcutta Cup on numerous occasions and claiming multiple Home Nations and Five Nations Championships before the tournament evolved into today’s Six Nations Championship. Whilst the Scots have never won the Six Nations, they remain ever-present competitors in the competition and have qualified for every Rugby World Cup since the tournament’s inception in 1987. Several momentous occasions in rugby history have taken place in Scotland. It was in Melrose in the Scottish Borders, that the shortened seven-a-side version of rugby was invented. In 1883, a local butcher and talented fly-half, Ned Haig, came up with the idea as a fundraising event for his local rugby club. What began as a practical solution to attract larger crowds soon evolved into rugby sevens, a variant now played professionally around the world and, since 2016, an Olympic sport. The Borderers take rugby sevens so seriously that in 1983, when the victorious French side gallantly presented their Melrose Sevens winners’ medals to the local girls there was a veritable uproar throughout the town. Rugby in New Zealand is fairly ubiquitous; children of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to play. But in Scotland, historically, rugby has reflected the country’s class system, regional identities, industrial history and sense of community. Unlike football, rugby never spread evenly across Scotland. Rather, two distinct cultures emerged. In Edinburgh and to a lesser extent Glasgow, rugby became associated with middle-class Scotland; it was the game of independent schools, universities, the professional classes, lawyers, doctors and merchants. Many of the earliest clubs were formed by former pupils of schools like the Edinburgh Academicals. In the Borders, however, rugby was everybody’s game. Farmers played, alongside mill workers, shopkeepers, teachers and the local GP. Children grew up assuming they’d play rugby because their fathers, uncles and grandfathers had done the same. Rugby largely transcended class; it became the shared language of the community. Indeed, for centuries, Borderers had played various forms of folk football, some of which bore a remarkable similarity to rugby. During the nineteenth century, the Borders was dominated by woollen mills, farming communities and close-knit market towns. Hawick, my grandmother’s home, was one of the region’s great textile centres, and like many Border towns it developed a fiercely independent character. Unlike the rapidly industrialising cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, these towns had incredibly strong local identities. And so, when rugby clubs appeared in the 1870s, they quickly became expressions of civic pride. In the small towns of the Borders, where association football had yet to establish a strong foothold, rugby clubs such as Gala, Hawick, Selkirk, Jedforest, and Melrose emerged as the centre of community life, drawing together farming communities scattered across the surrounding hills and valleys. And so it is that a handful of towns of only a few thousand people have produced a remarkable number of international rugby players like Gregor Townsend, Doddie Weir, Greig Laidlaw, Jim Telfer, Stuart Hogg and John Rutherford. I have my own connection to Scottish rugby in the form of my great-uncle, Norman Davidson (1931-2024). I never really knew Uncle Norman; I remember him most clearly from my grandmother’s funeral, but I found myself thinking about him often as I watched Scotland play these past few Saturdays. Uncle Norman was a kind man, a private, reserved character, who valued humility over recognition, so much so that he chose not to have a funeral of his own when he passed away. Uncle Norman’s sporting career and approach to rugby represents a generation of Scottish rugby players who helped shape the culture of the sport long before professionalism transformed the game. Born in Hawick in 1931, Norman came from a time when rugby players were not celebrities or full-time athletes. Rather, they were doctors, teachers, tradesmen and professionals who trained after work and played for the love of the game and the honour of representing their communities. Norman was a student and doctor alongside his sporting endeavours. He was also a sporting all-rounder, playing first-class cricket for the Scotland national cricket team in 1951 (five caps) and representing the Scotland national rugby union team from 1952 to 1954 (seven caps). Norman also played rugby for the South of Scotland and an Edinburgh-Glasgow combined XV against the touring Springboks and All Blacks respectively, and represented the Barbarians, Edinburgh District, Royal Navy, United Services and Hampshire, captaining the latter two teams. After his sporting career, Norman emigrated to New Zealand. He worked as a doctor at Whangarei Hospital and was awarded a Queen's Service Medal for public service in the 1995 New Year Honours. Norman’s rugby career began locally; he was selected for Hawick High School’s 1st XI aged only 13; the only other pupil his age selected that year was the future international rugby referee Eric Grierson. Following this, Norman played rugby for junior side Hawick Harlequins before debuting for the ‘Greens’, as Hawick Rugby Club is affectionately known. In 2022, Norman wrote of the Greens: “I have wonderful memories of playing rugby for Hawick and of splendid team-mates I played with. The Greens are the beating heart of Hawick and they will always be a very special team.” According to his obituary in The Offside Line, Uncle Norman was “usually a stand-off”, and was celebrated for his “startling acceleration,” “good hands”, and his “ability to kick with either foot.” I wish I could have seen him play. It could never be said that Scotland has dominated world rugby. But as we know in New Zealand, rugby is about more than trophies. It’s about the communities it has helped build, the camaraderie on and off the pitch, the weekly tradition of watching one’s younger siblings chase a ball around a muddy paddock. Rugby in Scotland, particularly in the Borders, is less a spectacle than a tradition; carried from one generation to the next — though never with a forward pass. On Saturday November 7th the Scots will face off against the All Blacks at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. You can bet I’ll be there, torn between my natural inclination to cheer on the All Blacks and my quiet love for the underdog, Scotland. May the best side win. Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
